- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Research
that may lead to a better understanding of how diseases like mad cow destroy
the brain and how the West Nile Virus spreads were among discoveries by
high school students honored at a national science contest on Monday.
-
- Yin Li, a 17-year-old senior from New York City's Stuyvesant
High School, won $100,000 in scholarship money for studying how a protein
from a mouse's brain reproduced itself when inserted in yeast cells, advancing
the understanding of neurological diseases like bovine spongiform encephalopathy
, known as mad cow disease, or its human equivalent Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
-
- Li was among 19 high school students from around the
nation who received prizes in the Siemens Westinghouse annual competition
out of more than 1,000 who entered.
-
- "There is a plan behind everything. It's just extraordinary
to get a glimpse of what that is," said Li who volunteered to work
on the project in the laboratory of Nobel Prize-winner Eric Kandel after
being inspired by his study on brain cells, memory and learning.
-
- Science is considered an extremely noble profession in
countries like China, India, and the former Soviet Union, said Albert Hoser,
chairman and CEO of Siemens Foundation. "I'm afraid this is not so
in this country."
-
- Mark Schneider, 18, and his brother Jeffrey Schneider,
16, will share $100,000 as winners of the team category for advancing ways
to understand the spread of West Nile.
-
- They were inspired to look at mosquitoes because the
youngest of the brothers from South Windsor High School in Connecticut
was especially susceptible to being bitten. They looked at the factors
affecting the transmission and reproduction of the West Nile Virus using
a computer program.
-
- One of their main findings is that drought actually helps
proliferate the virus, said Mark Schneider. His theory is that under drought
conditions mosquitoes and their predators live in separate water pools.
The predators are therefore less likely to eat the mosquitoes and keep
the population under control.
-
- Other prize winners included Arun Thottumkara, a 17-year-old
senior from Macomb, Illinois, who was inspired by the bad smell in his
father's laboratory to find ways of producing environment-friendly chemical
compounds.
-
- Sean Mehra and Jeffrey Reitman, 17-year-olds from Jericho,
New York, were recognized for work with molecules that can be used as lubricants
in space-based machinery or in making computer chips.
-
- "We are trying to showcase young people who go into
math, science and technology because this is what will drive the struggles,
which will keep this country competitive and which will advance the lives
and improve the lives of humankind on this planet," said Hoser of
the Siemens Foundation.
-
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-
- Comment
- From Marjorie Tietjen
- 12-10-3
-
- Hi Jeff,
-
- I am writing in reference to the article about the teens
researching West Nile Virus. The article mentions that teenagers from
Windsor High School in Connecticut, determined that drought increases the
spread of West Nile Virus. I live in Connecticut and I remember the severe
drought we had a couple of summers ago. Several years ago I wrote an article
that you posted "Are Chemtrails Causing Drought?". We were having
a very difficult time in Connecticut and I was observing the correlation
between the chemtrails and the ensuing drought. Always before a front was
predicted to pass through with rain, the jets would saturate the air with
the chemtrails. We would always end up with little rain and mostly all
we recieved was a fine mist. This happened time after time. It was extremely
predictable! I even visited many of the produce growers in the area in
order to draw their attention to this. West Nile Virus made it's debut
in N.Y and the Connecticut area. Institutions such as Yale and Rockefeller
University, have been housing West Nile Virus for years. The media has
been telling us that West Nile Virus has never before been in this hemisphere.
The United states also sold West Nile Virus to Iraq before and maybe during
the first Gulf War. It certainly appears that we are being lied to.
-
- At the same time this drought situation is occurring,
we were also listening to the West Nile Virus propaganda. I have always
suspected that the West Nile Virus "outbreak" was either orchestrated
or even made up , to some degree. I just know something is not kosher.
After reading this article, it has crossed my mind that perhaps part of
the chemtrail operation is to create drought and maybe to even spread West
Nile Virus and other diseases. Just a thought.
-
- Marge Tietjen
|
